email Youtube

Home
Galleries
Blog
Workshops & Calendar
Store
Resources
About
Contact

Joshua, the quilt in process, #3–hair!

The feature that gets the most comments on this quilt is the hair.  Would you believe it is made from batik fabrics that are trees, shrubs, thickets, flowers and whatnot! Astonishingly, I actually remembered to take in progress photos, including of the fabrics (before I used them up)!  Here is some/most of the cloth:

And here is a bit more:

Then I started creating the base of the hair.  I slipped a pattern under an applique press cloth as a guide.  I cut larger chunks to begin:

Then I cut slivers, collaging them on to the surface–notice on some how I feathered the ends:

I kept adding:

And adding, until it was Joshua’s hair, and I fused the hair to the face:

I use one of those itty-bitty 18mm rotary cutters.  For years I delayed buying one…after all, why did I need another?  I had my trusty 45mm!  OH BOY do I love the little ones.  The jumbo that some folks use, the 60mm, is like a school bus:  large, does a lot, but cumbersome.  The 45 mm I use most of the time is the all-purpose mini-van.  The 18mm is the Mazda Miata, that nifty little sports car that corners and twists and turns in tiny spaces.  It pivots on a dime… it is great for freeform cutting (not so great with a ruler though).  So I set out a chunk of pre-fused (with MistyFuse of course) fabric, and slice up curves and slivers.  Even with the layering, this hair stayed pliable–not stiff at all!

Finally, I quilted it.  The 16 threads on the surface are the ones used in his face, arms, foot (not seen in this shot) andhair:

In the first attempt picture, Joshua has a dark patch under his right eye and a too-pale bulb on his temple.  Those stitches got picked out and re-done alternating two colors of thread since of course, even with hundreds of spools and probably two dozen browns I still didn’t have enough of a smooth color range! But as you can tell, it turned out right in the end.

I always love the back side of my quilts, so I have to share this picture, also in progress:

And a bit more of the back:

I’ll have more soon…the guitar,the background, the furniture…..stay tuned!

3 Responses to “Joshua, the quilt in process, #3–hair!”

  1. Trish Says:

    Wow, I’m amazed at how those fabrics when put together look so great as hair. Great Job!

  2. Heidi Says:

    Thanks for sharing, very interesting and inspiring

  3. Grace Says:

    I tend toward the abstract in my work and am now trying to delve into some representational work (our orchid show). Sometimes you wonder (us…not you obviously, lol) how to get the nuances in hair and flowers and such. What a wonderful demo, thank you.

    And your stitching is superb!! Oh to dare to put a solid looking fab on the back of one my pieces! One of these days…..mmmh, who knows.